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Dan Ariely on the Situation of Expectation

The good folks at Big Think interviewed behavioral economist Dan Ariely and asked him about the the nature of objective reality. Among other things, Ariely had this to say:

It turns out that if a physician comes to you and injects you with whatever – saline water – your body expects pain relief. And your body secretes substances that are very much like morphine. So it doesn’t matter what you get from the injection. You actually get pain relief from your own body as a reaction to that. Now you can’t just close your eyes and say, “Please can I have some pain killers.” That doesn’t work. But when a physician injects you with anything – even saline water – you get the pain relief that is actually a substance you can’t buy over the counter. It’s like morphine. But what is the reality there?